I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal ;)

It's been a little crazy around here lately. Christmas was pretty low key. I managed to catch a whopper of a cold, so I slept through most of the holidays. I was teaching a winter intensive class at my university called American Culture in Film. We had about three hours each day for class, so I'd lecture for awhile to highlight the various aspects of American culture in the movie of the day and teach any necessary vocab or idiom, then we'd watch the movie and have some discussion at the end.

There were several interesting moments in this class. We watched quite a variety of movies, ranging from 1937 to 2009. Most of my students really liked the black and white films we watched. All of my female students agreed that Jimmy Stewart was pretty hot ;) It was a lot of fun to watch my students watch the movies. Most of the films they had never even heard of before, so it was all new to them. They were really excited about ET and The Wizard of Oz. I did a poll to see what their favorite movie was, and it was a tie between A Charlie Brown Christmas and The Shop Around the Corner. I definitely wasn't expecting either of those to top the list.

Prepping and teaching a 3 hour class every day was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It definitely took a lot of time, because I had to watch every single movie in advance to make notes and create a lesson out of it. Between being sick and teaching, things have been pretty boring around here lately.

The one big exciting thing happening is the plans for my trip to China are pretty much all made! I'll be leaving in 23 days for a three week tour of six cities in China. I'll get to see a lot of my Chinese friends from my Purdue days, which I'm pretty happy about! The one difficult thing will be packing. I'll be visiting the Northernmost province of China that borders Siberia, and end up in the Southernmost province of China that is very near Taiwan. Siberia is a frozen wasteland that is ridiculously cold. Taiwan is a tropical climate. I think that this trip will prove the wonderful value of layers ;)

And finally, to end this incredibly haphazard blog entry, I give you a strip from the ever-class Calvin and Hobbes.



From the Republic of Korea, I wish you a happy Friday (or Thursday, depending on when you read this)!!